Tag Archives: imperialism

‘What is certain is that Barack Obama’s rapacious coup in Ukraine has ignited a civil war and Vladimir Putin is being lured into a trap.’ Photograph: Anatoliy Stepanov/AFP/Getty Images

I watched Dr Strangelove the other day. I have seen it perhaps a dozen times; it makes sense of senseless news. When Major TJ “King” Kong goes “toe to toe with the Rooskies” and flies his rogue B52 nuclear bomber to a target in Russia, it’s left to General “Buck” Turgidson to reassure the president. Strike first, says the general, and “you got no more than 10-20 million killed, tops”. President Merkin Muffley: “I will not go down in history as the greatest mass murderer since Adolf Hitler.” General Turgidson: “Perhaps it might be better, Mr President, if you were more concerned with the American people than with your image in the history books.”

The genius of Stanley Kubrick’s film is that it accurately represents the cold war’s lunacy and dangers. Most of the characters are based on real people and real maniacs. There is no equivalent to Strangelove today because popular culture is directed almost entirely at our interior lives, as if identity is the moral zeitgeist and true satire is redundant, yet the dangers are the same. The nuclear clock has remained at five minutes to midnight; the same false flags are hoisted above the same targets by the same “invisible government”, as Edward Bernays, the inventor of public relations, described modern propaganda.

I’ve put this off long enough. I’ve enjoyed the fruits and sweetness of a brief entanglement with bliss and despair long enough. It is time that I get down to business, call a spade a spade and then pick up my spade and put it to its intended use. I am done with my creature comforts and of protecting what has yet to be taken, as if what has already been taken has not been egregious enough.

Perhaps I should qualify the comforts I enjoy today, at the edge of this springboard, by mentioning where this journey began for me. Continue reading →

On, December 3, President Barack Obama warned the Syrian government against using chemical weapons against, among others, NATO-Saudi sponsored fighters trying to overthrow President Bashar Assad.

A few days later, British Prime Minister David Cameron’s foreign secretary claimed that he had evidence the Syrian government plans to use chemical weapons of mass destruction (WMD) against the rebels.

I should have suspected that the future would not be anything like it had been promised to us in 1977.During a compulsory sex education course one of our football coaches had the indubitable privilege of referring to our nether regions as, “gentiles.”Continue reading →

Is a World War III Scenario Unfolding?

With the killing of Libya’s leader Muammar Gaddafi this past week, NATO is celebrating what, in their view, is a great victory. However, this so-called “victory” has nothing to do with democracy, freedom or justice; it is part of a broad, insidious geopolitical strategy that has been on NATO’s drawing board for years. And what is even more frightening than the bloodlust being shamelessly splashed across the mainstream media is the fact that this latest manoeuver is merely a small part of a much wider military agenda with potentially catastrophic consequences.

In his latest e-book, “Towards a World War III Scenario“, Prof. Michel Chossudovsky outlines the strategies and real motives behind the war on Libya, what we can expect next from NATO (the world’s deadly “humanitarian” force), and the necessary steps for dispelling disinformation and preventing war on an unprecedented scale.

On 14 October, President Barack Obama announced he was sending United States special forces troops to Uganda to join the civil war there. In the next few months, US combat troops will be sent to South Sudan, Congo and Central African Republic. They will only “engage” for “self-defence”, says Obama, satirically. With Libya secured, an American invasion of the African continent is under way.

Obama’s decision is described in the press as “highly unusual” and “surprising”, even “weird”. It is none of these things. It is the logic of American foreign policy since 1945.

I HEARTILY ACCEPT the motto, — “That government is best which governs least”;(1) and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, — “That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government. The standing army is only an arm of the standing government. The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. Witness the present Mexican war,(2) the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool; for, in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure.

If I could publicly ask our beloved president one question, it would be this: “Mr. President, in your short time in office you’ve waged war against six countries — Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and Libya. This makes me wonder something. With all due respect: What is wrong with you?”

The American media has done its best to dismiss or ignore Libyan charges that NATO/US missiles have been killing civilians (the people they’re supposedly protecting), at least up until the recent bombing “error” that was too blatant to be covered up.

I’m content to let most holidays be just that—a time when you come off your daily grind and act up with the friends and family. July 4th—or, Independence Day—is a bit more complicated for me. It’s a celebration of the United States’ mythical founding story, an ahistorical account that was written to obscure the young nation’s many, many crimes against humanity. It never fails to surprise me how little Americans know of their real history, and thus how often we repeat its sins.

Today, Americans of all races hear about slavery, but haven’t the faculties to truly grasp it, or how crucial that brutality was to creating the wealth upon which this nation was built. Few schools teach that, in fact, trans-Atlantic slavery began as British capitalists stole their own countrymen’s common lands and forced the displaced into pressed labor on their ships. Or that it grew through their Irish conquest, where they repeated the formula, shipping forced labor to the Caribbean. Or that white supremacy was concocted by European capitalists who feared a multinational, multiracial coalition of the many hues of people they had forced to labor for them in deadly conditions in the Americas. When African slavery proved the most profitable way to extract labor, they just dehumanized the Africans from which they stole. Anybody who objected to this labor system was branded an outlaw, an illegal, as it were.

The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order
Preface to the Second Edition

Barely a few weeks after the military coup in Chile on September 11, 1973, overthrowing the elected government of President Salvador Allende, the military Junta headed by General Augusto Pinochet ordered a hike in the price of bread from 11 to 40 escudos, a hefty overnight increase of 264%. This economic shock treatment had been designed by a group of economists called the “Chicago Boys”.

At the time of the military coup, I was teaching at the Institute of Economics of the Catholic University of Chile, which was a nest of Chicago trained economists, disciples of Milton Friedman. On that September 11, in the hours following the bombing of the Presidential Palace of La Moneda, the new military rulers imposed a 72-hour curfew. When the university reopened several days later, the “Chicago Boys” were rejoicing. Barely a week later, several of my colleagues at the Institute of Economics were appointed to key positions in the military government.

In light of the brutal death and destruction wrought on Libya by the relentless US/NATO bombardment, the professed claims of “humanitarian concerns” as grounds for intervention can readily be dismissed as a blatantly specious imperialistploy in pursuit of “regime change” in that country.

There is undeniable evidence that contrary to the spontaneous, unarmed and peaceful protest demonstrations in Egypt, Tunisia and Bahrain, the rebellion in Libya has been nurtured, armed and orchestrated largely from abroad, in collaboration with expat opposition groups and their local allies at home. Indeed, evidence shows that plans of “regime change” in Libya were drawn long before the insurgency actually started in Benghazi; it has all the hallmarks of a well-orchestrated civil war [1].

It is very tempting to seek the answer to the question “why regime change in Libya?” in oil/energy. While oil is undoubtedly a concern, it falls short of a satisfactory explanation because major Western oil companies were already extensively involved in the Libyan oil industry. Indeed, since Gaddafi relented to the US-UK pressure in 1993 and established “normal” economic and diplomatic relations with these and other Western countries, major US and European oil companies struck quite lucrative deals with the National Oil Corporation of Libya.

COTO BREAKING NEWS: Eyewitness account describes the evidence that NATO’s invasion of Libya constitutes multiple war crimes. This is a military coup which the Libyans will resist for as long as they live. For more info, see Lindauer’s recent piece, Going Rogue: NATO War Crimes in Libya.

TRIPOLI: We have so much documentation that it make your head spin. We spoke with 250 rebels who were released by the Tribal Leaders with the blessings of Ghadafi, the stories they tell of the atrocities that they did are horrifying we have them on tape. We also have many rebels that are documented admitting all the atrocities that they themselves committed. But, here is one truth that is irrefutable – the 2000 tribes of Libya are the actual government here, if anyone does not know this then they do not know Libya.

These tribal leaders released 150 rebel prisoners 3 weeks ago, 10 days later another 250 were released. There were about 20 foreigners that witnessed this magnificent show of forgiveness, we have this on tape. There is another release of 200 prisoners in these coming days.

The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) was formed February 2010 to exclude the US and Canada which control the OAS (Organization of American States), and will be formally launched on July 5, 2011. ~Ed.

I am in Caracas, Vz today (May 29th–Casey’s birthday)—a country I love and a people that I support with all my heart in their struggle against US imperialism and corporate interests so they can make their own lives better.

Nine of us came from the US to support the people of Venezuela in rejecting the US economic sanctions that were imposed by the State Departments because, apparently, Venezuela sent two shipments of oil product to Iran.

Now that the end of the world didn’t happen, I can’t stop thinking about it. What chutzpah, what a diminished worldview, not simply to make such a prediction, but — even more incomprehensible, to my relentlessly self-questioning mind — to know you’ll be among the saved.

In 1011, a guy like Harold Camping would probably have been able to generate more panic than bemusement. A millennium later, with science taught in the public schools and all, we have a little more collective resistance to such thundering certainty leaping from highway billboards. I confess, however, to feeling a deep, reptilian tug last Friday morning, as I saw the sign — SAVE THIS DATE, MAY 21, 2011, CHRIST IS COMING — while driving through eastern Wisconsin. Yikes, that’s tomorrow.

Dr. Hall, professor of Globalization Studies at the University of Lethbridge (Alberta, Canada), has recently completed his Magnum Opus, “The Bowl With One Spoon” — specifically the two books that comprise the past 16 years of his research; “Earth Into Property: Colonization, Decolonization and Capitalism” and “The American Empire and the Fourth World”.

Deconstructing the US Military

While in Kabul in March of this year, I visited the U.S. military base in that city, Camp Eggers . Knowing I would need a pretext to gain entry, I typed up a letter offering to give a presentation on wildlife in Afghanistan , which I had been studying. When approaching the base, one passes through an initial checkpoint, where a Hummer topped with a machine-gun nest stands guard. Then there is a 100-yard walk down a narrow corridor between high concrete blast walls, at which point one arrives at a guarded entry point through the wall. I showed my passport and letter, and was escorted through a second layer of blast walls to a little wooden information booth in this still-peripheral circle of defense. The pimply young lad manning the booth was flustered by my request; he had never seen anything quite like it. He did what all soldiers do when faced with something new; he phoned his superior for orders on how to proceed.

I will be moderating a panel discussion following a showing of the film Concrete, Steel and Paint at 6 p.m. Friday, April 15, at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, 1870 Campus Drive, on the school’s Evanston campus. This is a great movie. Please come if you’re in the Chicago area. I have several upcoming reading/speaking engagements related to my new book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound: On Sunday, April 24, I will be speaking at Mothers Trust, in Ganges, Michigan. On May 6, I will be reading at the Quaker Friends meetinghouse in Lake Forest, Illinois.

By Robert C. Koehler

The Arab Spring — which indeed is a global spring — is a struggle, an upheaval, for fundamental justice and humanity. That’s the problem.

We —the Washington Consensus, the post-colonial West, the world’s military and economic overlords — have no more enthusiasm for this awakening, this cry for genuine democracy and equitable distribution of resources, than the tottering autocrats of the Middle East, most of whom (exception: Muammar Gaddafi) are our allies.